Welcome to Books and Ideas for Entrepreneurs, a show where we talk through the theory so that you can put it into practice on your journey to building a better business. On today's show we're going to discuss Jonah Berger's book, Contagious, a study on why certain thing catch on, get shared, and spread in viral fashion. Professor Berger gives us a 6 Step Framework to help us make our ideas and messages shareable and in my humble opinion this book is a modern marketing masterpiece. It won the 2014 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book of the Year Award from the American Marketing Association. In my days as a faculty professor at Temple University, Contagious was a frequent book on the required reading list for my students.
Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton Business School, who studies how social influence shapes the decisions we make. In Contagious, he gives us an acronym called STEPPS.
Social Currency – people share things that make them look good, intelligent, and successful. They share things that raise their social status or improves their social brand reputation.
Triggers – people share things that are top of mind, so it behooves a business to link the product to something that customer does on a regular basis so that there is constant recall.
Emotion – people share things that they are very emotional about. Either really excited or really anger about, but nothing in the middle.
Public - people share and talk about things that are highly visible. How are you going to get your name out there?
Practical Value - people share and talk about things that save people time, money, and effort.
Stories - people share and talk about things that are packaged in a good story.